 Okay. Thank you Matthew. Hey everybody. Last session of the day. Five o'clock. This is called dedication so I'm really really grateful to see people in the room right now. We're gonna be having a bit of a conversation in the middle of this session. I gave this, well it's not exactly the session because we won't know until the end how similar it is to how I've done it before, but I gave the session in Amsterdam and in the middle I actually want to have a chat and we have one microphone so I'm wondering if it's not too much of an inconvenience to you or would you be willing to huddle a little bit in that middle section so that it would be easy to pass that microphone around so that we can have a bit more of a chat and that the recording later has you know has what you're saying rather than me having to necessarily repeat everything. I will repeat things that for people who can't get to the microphone so we don't have to wait too much but um yeah that'd be really that'd be really cool so thank you. You know if you don't want to participate in that conversation then obviously you don't need to huddle at the microphone but I just wanted to you know give you an opportunity to to do that before we kind of got into it. Okay so my name is Donna Benjamin. I'm also known as Catacrab on Twitter and on Driple.org and at Gmail so if you want to continue to have this conversation with me then you can find me using Catacrab. Constructive conflict resolution huh hmm so conflict is human nature really although not exclusively human cats and dogs are somewhat famous enemies right but it kind of underscores the conflict is a fairly natural process. We have a natural biological response to conflict. Flight or fight the adrenaline response. Adrenaline courses through our blood and forces us to choose that fight or flight mechanism or in some cases freeze the kind of rabbits in the headlight approach. What do I do? I can't make my choice. Natural conflict is natural but conflict isn't just war. When many people think about conflict they think about real violence you know blood on the streets wars but it's often it's often much smaller stems from often simple misunderstandings or a fear of speaking up. A lot of conflict begins with unmet or unexpressed needs right. I mentioned flight or fight but there are some other common responses to to conflict. It's easier to walk away to give up so avoidance is a is a common response but I'd say it's not a constructive response. Avoidance tends to help avoidance tends not to help us build a better solution so it's a really natural thing I was like I really just I'd really rather just not know about this I really just would rather walk away these people are yelling at each other I'm gonna walk away I can't deal with this this crit criticism that I'm getting I just want to walk away so just a sense of avoidance but it's again in that really natural response to to conflict in the fight or flight or freeze this is one of the kind of common ones and so one of the things I'm thinking about is how do we kind of check those natural responses and work towards constructive responses that's one of my questions. Another one is denial just try to pretend it isn't happening it's not even let your backing away it's just like just don't acknowledge that that's an issue not happening not on my radar. Denying as a problem doesn't move the issue forward it doesn't help anyone construct a solution right so denial yes another really natural response so there's nothing wrong with it right in that sense like we can't escape our biology the fight that adrenaline response and the way we naturally want to respond to conflicts these are natural responses out some people like to say our lizard brain right our amygdala we just have these natural responses to conflict and again trying to find the constructive way forward isn't necessarily the groove we naturally want to kind of rock to does that make sense I don't think it does alright it's not a game like conflict is is is for real and we also have a lot of things like you know battleship where we play around with with ideas when the underpinning ideas of conflict but it's not a game though many people will treat conflict as a game or you find you may have heard this thing of that they're just game players they're kind of pushing people's buttons right so some people do get into conflict as though it is a game but if you've seen the classic movie war games you may remember that the only way to play to win is is not to play so if we can try and stop the game playing around conflict we might be able to move forward to something more constructive so I have this kind of I just wanted to pause a moment to think about the historical nature of conflict I mean really history is the story of conflict right we we kind of our human stories are filled with tales of war and conquest you think about kind of an historical timeline right they're often punctuated by you know invasions and revolutions and beheadings and you know these kinds of things that this is something that's kind of part of the way we even think about our own humanity and where we've come from and even where we might be going the threats of war and conflict and we've had various ways of resolving conflicts some have tried building walls in various places at various times with various effects or building arsenals of missiles you know what was that you know the threat of mutually assured destruction was it was a way of avoiding conflict apparently or perhaps in courtrooms resolving conflict in courts it's something that you know it's a daily so it's a huge industry right the legal profession but I'd argue that this is not constructive resolution of conflict either there's usually a winner which means there's also usually a loser right so whilst it's a less bloody way of resolving a conflict I don't know that it's necessarily building a constructive solution to whatever that issue was so conflict to me really challenge is at the heart of conflict and I believe and this is I guess my key premise here is that accepting that challenge is is the key to constructive resolution to say if someone presents if or a pair of people or groups of people present with some kind of conflict then underlying that is some kind of challenge which represents an opportunity for positive change or maybe it's removed a change which is a removal of something which is causing angst and grief and trouble right but it's an opportunity for change of one sort or another which really should be positive have the opportunity to be positive to recognise that if trouble is is is being generated then there might be some cause underlying cause to that trouble which is going to be a useful clue to fixing something really really meaningful we we need to explore and test and challenge ideas and I really like this quote and and you know I think Einstein has held up as this person of you know great genius but I think this idea is really useful here and thinking about conflict as well that we can't solve the problems by using the same kind of thinking we use when we when we created them and to really again get to that heart of what is the challenge here can we test the ideas blow apart the assumptions that we're bringing to the table they might be right but if we don't question them then we don't know so sometimes these ideas compete and we need some mechanism to rub those ideas up against each other I guess in a way that causes something useful to come out of it to perhaps improve those ideas by by that competition so really what is conflict and this is where I want us to try and have a bit of a conversation the reality is it really does mean very different things to different people and I think that that difference is at the heart of why conflict is is is actually valuable that difference is why diversity matters that it's because we have different perspectives on what any given solution might look like that means we get an opportunity to improve that solution so what is it and this is where I'm going to turn to you and see if we can have a little bit of a conversation it's different things to different people and we've got a range of different people here in the room so I'm hoping we might be able to explore this idea a little and come to a kind of common a common sense just in the room today of what conflict means to us who are here so who's going to be brave and grab the mic and have a go what do you think what is conflict what does it mean to you the flip side is maybe you have an example of a kind of conflict to illustrate what it means to you you might have a story yeah please come and huddle up so we can have a chat since I'm going to be the first to leave because I have to catch a train I'll be the first to present my thoughts on that can you just let us know your name oh sorry I'm Rick Rick pine I'm actually a local that matters to me a conflict is kind of a difference of opinion a difference of opinion right yeah is that all you were looking for yeah no I it's not all I'm looking for exactly right but yeah please elaborate I just wanted it I guess add to that that I liked what you said about a conflict is actually underlying it's a challenge and that is in fact the reason that is the challenge is how are you going to come to some agreement about the difference of opinion and yeah I run into that a lot which is why I decided to attend this so I look forward to hearing what other people have to say about that thanks Rick yeah Max Bronson I like what you said earlier about a difference in needs so often you can be talking about the same thing and the same solution will work but no they don't you don't know what each other's needs are so you can't use the right language so it feels conflict laden yeah right yeah I think that's that's right yep couple of things one is there's another way to deal with conflict in addition to the ones you listed one that is very damaging to the self that's surrender yes but to me conflict seems to ultimately be a difference in worldview caused partly because each and every one of us in this room outside of this room my cats at home who have conflicts with each other each one of us lives inside our own head ultimately each and every sentient creature has a different and unique worldview acknowledging that accepting that there are different worldviews that different worldviews are a strength of our species can help us deal with conflict but they are also the different worldviews are the source of all conflict great thank you I didn't catch your name Valerie Griffin valor griffin thank you I mean I think that's that's absolutely right that sense of worldview and thanks for bringing up surrender it's definitely another another response to why is that white flag and yep yep thank you hello my name is a Damon Launay and I'm gonna use a somewhat specific example that's going on with our site so on the front end and what the public sees it's really great and we also have a really hard-working team but at the same time one of our other in-house developers which is not you know the team that built our website he's more of our guy who just maintains things and I'm not a technical person like extreme you know I'm kind of like right in the middle probably more on the green side of things but the membership database is extremely complicated and has many different moving parts and we can never seem to get it working quite right in our in-house guy who doesn't specialize in Drupal he specializes in some other programs cold fusion or something like that you know he keeps he he'll say things you know like trying to code and in Drupal with at least the membership database side is like trying to code with boxing gloves to get to do what he wanted to do and so for our organization it's kind of you know I'm trying to keep both sides happy and I can tell that he's getting exasperated so what do you think is his underlying challenge well I know that you know the company he works for did bid on the website you know there was all sorts of different political sort of pieces that go together and come along with associations but you know we like having them on the team a lot you know it's been part of the team for a long time so I think he just wants it to work right and I think he just is getting frustrated yeah well I mean frustration is a real is an often a real cause so I guess the challenge for you guys is to really get at the heart of that frustration and see where and how it could be mitigated you know it doesn't mean is is there something that it's a it is is it his learning journey that is frustrated because he doesn't have the skills possibly yeah he's catching on pretty quickly with with Drupal but I guess it's just not his platform yeah right so he's familiar with he's being asked to swim in an environment that that that's not natural to him yeah yeah I mean I think that that really illustrates yet another kind of element to it right is it's not necessarily an obvious fight going on but someone is you know just really struggling with the broader environment and that causes that has a ruple effect on all of the people around him because you know he can't play the game in in the way that everybody else is so he's got a natural you know a natural unmet need to be able to really collaborate and it sounds like you alluded to there might have been some some sort of political hurt feelings about not having had his option chosen as well a little bit more yeah still does a lot of work for us just you know you'll attach it to the website build a page using his programs cool we need to yeah right so um as I go through the rest of the presentation there's a few tools at the end and they might be something to look up and see if that's going to help resource you to be able to address some of those some of those challenges thank you thank you hi my name is Cheryl Schmalz hi Cheryl and conflict for me is when my expectations don't match my reality yeah beautifully beautifully succinct when my expectations don't meet my reality yes sorry don't yeah my expectations don't meet my reality and I think that's really that's a nice sums it up that's tweetable as they say thank you anyone else have any thoughts on conflict that they want to want to share yeah please my name is Tim Nafziger and along with working with Drupal I've been part of an organization called Christian peacemaker teams that specializes in some of these areas I'd like to talk to you later yeah be happy to talk so when I think about conflict to elaborate on something you said earlier about the health of conflict I think it's also important to acknowledge the role conflict plays in change processes you haven't given any specifics but you know bringing symphony on into the Drupal in Drupal 8 calls a lot of conflict and that's that's a part of a change process and you know building ownership of a change process is about conflict resolution as well so I just think there's a lot of very interesting pieces we could mine there around change in organizations and change in systems yes thank you very very useful and that change management is a whole field of how do you actually address the conflict that bringing change in and I don't think we've got those pieces in the community about how we respond and deal with stuff so would really like to bring that on board you know about the conflict resolution and community working group stuff and yeah great thanks Tim hey Matthew Matthew Saunders to me conflict is a collision of opinions ideas or understanding that creates disagreement and often anger very nice say that again a collision of opinions ideas or understanding that creates disagreement and often anger yep I like that anyone anyone want to respond to that as a defect as a kind of nice little definition of the having summed up a few of the things that have been said yeah seeing some nods anyone got anything else they want to add before we kind of move on a little okay so apologies to people watching this recording after the fact now what I'd actually like to do is have you have a quick chat with someone beside you and share just share an example of a conflict that may be a work or a personal or a community or whatever and just identify what the quickly what that conflict was and whether or not there was a resolution whatever that may have been and whether you felt that it was a constructive or not kind of solution so I think I just want to kind of get that those ideas bubbling and have some things in mind as we go forward so just you know wherever you happen to be just turn to the person who's nearest and just have a quick chat I just want to I just want to have a little bit more bandwidth than than me talking at you okay we probably don't have time for a report back from everyone but if you if you do if maybe we could just get a couple of quick report backs on any insights or revelations that people might have had out of that conversation anyone want to grab the mic and share a quick thought out of those conversations we probably don't have we don't have time for a report back from every single little conversation but does anyone have any kind of moments of inspiration or revelation that they want to kind of share back with the with the poor people who've been wondering what's been going on for the past five minutes on the recording yeah you have to use the mic yeah yeah thank you I probably say communication is probably key here because you know we have two sides you know to our web presence and you know they're probably not communicating is there I guess their issues that they have with you know the whole system is a whole right to each other is as well as they could be in nor have I as well as I could so communication getting clearer building clarity around what's being communicated and how it's been communicated exactly nice thank you okay so one of the other things that I think is is a really important sort of facet of this of this issue as a whole is as culture the different ways we approach conflict is really is often quite quite cultural and when we're only operating in a single culture or our own culture it's sometimes harder to see that when we come up against a very obviously different culture and we see that you know these people are responding in different ways it becomes more obvious but even within our own culture we can still come with different assumptions out you know individual families may have different ways of operating we may have learned different ways of responding to conflict from our families from the patterns of other generations that came before us so it's very cultural I think it's also very gendered like you know again different cultures will have degrees of how much this this impacts but you know men and women will respond differently to conflict there are horrible stats about you know the violence in general in in our community being predominantly acted by one gender on another so you know there are there are some elements in there that it really pays to be aware of and to just kind of check sometimes when dealing with conflict and having a response to them these things are not always easy to understand either when I go back to our you know our amygdala our natural responses our natural responses to respond and not necessarily take a step take a breath and be mindful about that response so it's not always easy and I think one of the other ones which perhaps is less over there are less generally understood is is authority and our relationship with authority is how we respond to conflict like if someone in a position of authority to you tells you to do something your your natural inclination to do what they said is going to depend on that authoritative relationship right and and this is one where as an Australian we tend to have a much a shorter what we call a power ratio index like our respect for authority is somewhat famously pretty non-existent and so if I'm given an order by someone in authority and I have reason to distrust or think that's wrong in some way I'm likely to say so one of the amplifications of this is this is really crazy anecdote but Qantas pilots have and also actually New Zealanders are even better at this than Australians but the Qantas pilots have been notoriously questioning of command when it's been wrong and and at some point someone did research and identified that this was actually one of the underlying reasons for Qantas's safety record the flip side of it was research was done on why I can't remember which but I think it may have been a Korean airline their black box recorders stuff found that yes that the pilot had actually made terrible mistakes and none of that pilots second in command were willing to overtly say hey that's a dumb thing don't do that they but they could hear in the coded responses that the sense that the that others thought it was wrong but they all went down with that plane because they weren't willing to they weren't they just couldn't reject his authority I mean that's a tragic that's a tragic amplification and the entire airline industry changed as a result of understanding that power distance ratio and that dynamic so that I think is also a good example out of tragedy to show that we can check our natural responses when we become aware of what they are likely to be maybe I'm an optimist but I think I think there's some kind of positive positivity out of that that we've now got a much much safer although this past year perhaps something else is going on but you know that we actually have a much safer airline industry because of that understanding but I think one of the other parts of that is if you are going to reject a command from authority that that needs to be done with respect but I'd say respect is even bigger than that respect is actually at the real heart of the way I've been thinking about constructive conflict resolution that we have to respond with respect no matter what that response is going to be in most martial arts we start with a bow we might be about to kick the shit out of each other but we're going to start with this very deep action and symbol of respect it's showing respect to our opponent and it's putting respect front and centre when we're about to when we disagree with each other it's like I'm about to you know really do you some damage hopefully because I'm gonna win this fight but I'm you know we say we start with respect and it's crucial and I say that it's also there's two sides to it it's not just a kind of abstract sense of respect but it's to be respectful but also to feel respected that it's coming back the other way to build this kind of bridge of trust is that respect is on both sides is held in both sides now I'm kind of enjoyed Jesus keynote this morning and he he actually had this quote as I think one of his lessons this morning was that honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress and and again I think that just kind of amplified to me this journey that I've been all about looking at constructive conflict resolution and that the sense that challenge and disagreement is a useful thing and the sense that it's a good sign of progress really kind of like was a bell ringing of resignation for me this morning yes that's that's the case if we don't have disagreement we're probably not really moving you know this is a sense of progress and the thing about having a disagreement is doing it in a in an environment of of trust that you can disagree with someone but still be able to have a useful productive friendly collegiate relationship with them that we can agree you know they all agree to disagree perhaps a move on but that we can disagree respectfully to get at the heart to find the challenge and address it in a way that's constructive that brings the progress the project the patch the relationship whatever whatever that kind of context to conflict is that we acknowledge what's at the heart of it and can move forward trust that we can find common ground I think that's the real key sometimes like one in my work in the community working group the the most upsetting to me as the kind of mediator is when I can't get people to at least to the table even to explore what it is that's at the heart of their disagreement when they just turn around and just you know they can't even find a little bit of trust to try so trusting that we can find common ground if we try I think is this next part so we have respect and trust we should have mutual goals and values especially if we bring this back to the context of the Drupal community we all want Drupal to be awesome right and if you don't then I think you're at the wrong conference right so there's some assumptions that we you know we make that mean let's hope that you know we can we can find that common ground that mutual goals and and mutual values but ultimately I think if you've got respect and trust there's another another corner to the triangle that we need and that's compassion sometimes you can't find a really useful solution and you have to be really compassionate about the person who's bringing their grievance to you you may not be able to solve their challenge it may be real and egregious and just a really hard problem but that doesn't mean that they're wrong or that their voice shouldn't be heard or that they're you know their challenge shouldn't be understood so to bring that sense of compassion and understanding is really important the flip side is maybe they need to bring some compassion to the table and understand the damage they're doing maybe they need to build a sense of compassion and put put different shoes on and see that the behavior that you know they're kind of railing with is is problematic but that's that's a hard roll as well but I I kind of feel that these are the three things like trust respect and compassion really get you a long way to that sitting at the table and finding those common goals to find a solution to put challenge and conflict on the table in a useful way rather than necessarily just walking away from it I talked before about there being non-constructive ways to solve conflicts those will always be in our toolkit sometimes that's the only way but I have hope that most of the time we can pause and find a constructive way forward you know if you disagree you can pull my hair you can smack me in the face right these are non-constructive ways of solving things you could bite me on the chin I love this picture but usually you know those kinds of approaches just really end in tears you know it's it's just doesn't make anyone happy at the end of the day I don't know that it's necessarily solve the problem people may have stopped talking about the problem but I don't know that anything useful has necessarily come out of these kinds of approaches springs us to Drupal drama now I heard some chuckles hands up overnight just for the you know the sake of doing hands up those long-term members of the Drupal community for whom Drupal drama is rings very you know like a bell yep you know we have we have had a few over the time I don't think we need to miss I can repeat this one who wants to call out a kind of famous Drupal drama that they're aware of just so we've got some common common language sorry rage quits repeated over and over mm-hmm yep any others who said what inappropriate thing during what presentation yep absolutely any others so you know some that went when ended up going really well when we introduced the Drupal concord of conduct there was a first draft there was a lot of gnashing of teeth and knitting of brows and the issue queue I don't know if you can nash your teeth and your brows and an issue cue but let's just for a minute say you can and then there was a second draft which was then more widely adopted so that wasn't that was one of those examples where you know it may have been quite a painful process to go through but end result was definitely a constructive you know a constructive outcome the get migration was a honest kind of honest disagreement and debate and that one you know perhaps wasn't so much drama but just as a you know a really good process to work through there's been some others where you know we haven't perhaps addressed and resolved the issues being being brought to light and have ended up in a fork such as backdrop so there's a few there are a few different things and there are sort of smaller micro you know between particular people or individuals that you know perhaps have ripple effects to others they may not that the protagonists may not be aware of the impact they're having on others so this is something that goes on in our community a lot in various shapes and sizes and degrees and we've developed some governance and a community working group to try and to try and get around them one of the key things though in the Drupal community is we have this we really value consensus we we actually value it very deeply and we work hard to achieve it we test ideas and we work towards finding common ground we can all agree on and we work and we work and we work and we work until we can find that common ground sometimes to perhaps the the detriment of progress sometimes it leads to stagnation I've actually skipped a slide the sense of you know wanting the same thing but not necessarily working together towards it takes a while sometimes to realize oh hang on we can just both point in the same direction stagnation though is the flip side to consensus when we can't reach consensus we drop a lot of activity and energy on the floor we lose a lot in this waiting for consensus that's never going to come when no one's idea can win we can't get consensus vast amounts of time and energy are wasted when we finally we could just have figured out a little bit sooner that we all wanted the same thing the challenge is in when we don't want the same thing and we can't reach and we can't reach consensus what do we have what do we get nothing yuck it's just where to stagnation is not healthy so how do we avoid this how do we break these stalemates because I mean I think this is an important point is conflict isn't always you know raging wars but sometimes it's it's the very it's right up sort of if that's the yang then conflict can be the yin it can be silence it can be ignoring it can be absence of progress it can be nothing so that's it's important to be as mindful of that as well so one of the things we've had is the code of conduct we've had it for a while now and I kind of I couldn't even tell you what year we finally got it we got a code of conduct Greg probably knows off the top of his head and then later we added the Drupal con code of conduct so we had our code of conduct for our project and our online personas and then we went through a process of having one for events such as this and that's been around but we had some unfinished business in the code of conduct we had a to-do item which was a conflict resolution process now we got that on board last year we've done that now which is really you know a real relief and we've actually even had some test runs now and gone through the motions and people are starting to understand that that process is around and exists and using it which is really useful so people are sort of saying hey you know kind of conduct and you know maybe you should have a chat about this offline if they're seeing things so we've even got bystanders now getting active in this process which is particularly gratifying to me because one of the things I've always wanted is a is a Drupal peacekeeping force or kind of like a peace core for core you know how do we keep the peace and and that is that has to belong to all of us like when people have an issue with each other let's not say it's just another Drupal drama and saying well maybe there's something in that issue that means we really should stop and pay attention maybe there is an opportunity here to to really move our project forward together because we have this underlying common common value and common goals in making Drupal awesome how do we keep the peace so Drupal org slash conflict resolution is where that lives and it's really you know it's really pretty simple just to go back a bit though you know it's the culmination of work begun by others the community working group kind of finally brought it home but it started with with a series of blog posts that Randy Fay wrote about governance we continued some work at the first community summit in Prague we brainstormed conflict there's a whole lot of stuff and I brought a document from my local state of Victoria the Human Rights Commission had a conflict resolution process that organizations could adopt so we brought a whole bunch of things to the table and we distilled it down we ended up with with this a three step process essentially step one is to try to talk to each other and it doesn't sound like rocket science really does it to see if you can just step outside that conflict for a moment and work out what that issue is between you to pause the natural reaction to pause the adrenaline response and just take a breath and say hey okay let me really hear what your what your what your your what your problem is what's your problem right but to do so respectfully with compassion and to trust that you do have common ground right have that conversation it's not always possible though right if only it were that easy so step two ask someone else to mediate ask a trusted colleague or a friend anyone a bystander to say hey what do you think where I'm thinking this so-and-so is thinking that we're just not getting anywhere can you help us take that next step ask someone else to help mediate the dispute and then the third one should that also not work is to reach out to the community working group there are four of us I'm the chair Angela Byron who was speaking in this room before me has so many hats in the community I can't believe she's on the community working group as well George Domet and Adam Hills we we we meet weekly to discuss hopefully mostly policy stuff like getting a conflict resolution policy process in place but also dealing with issues between members of the community who haven't been able to resolve it through steps one and two we have an incident report form where people can can report issues that they're seeing and we've seen people report their own issues and we've seen bystanders come and say hey these people are just at each other and it's not going anywhere and I don't think it's doing anyone any good and they bring it to our attention and so we can sort of step in and help but again there's only four of us I really want this peace core for core I really want more people to be able to understand this general approach to say it's okay for us to have conflict that's not the problem here problem is that we're not necessarily skilled and resourced to deal with it in a way that's constructive and that's my key thing here how do we say okay conflict happens fine what's the opportunity here and I think that could be really positive at least I hope so I'd love to see this army of empowered bystanders willing to help and maintain the peace to stand up to speak up but I think we might need to skill up to do that and so I've been looking at what kinds of tools we could use to do that and then I need the next step is how do we disseminate that in a really useful way throughout our community and that's again another opportunity for conversation like I think there's a lot of things we could do we can't do them all at once we don't have the resources but I think it's worth thinking about do other people think it's worth thinking about seeing some nods yeah cool so one of the ones one of the frameworks for thinking about conflict and this is just sort of quick tour through some of the things I've been looking at is the sense of the drama triangle it's a useful model for thinking about interpersonal conflict there's a persecutor a rescuer and a victim hands up if you ever found yourself drawn into a drama conflict and felt confused or uncomfortable about what happened there's a few hands right it's it's a pretty common one there's a chance you've been drawn into this sort of negative dynamic but but not necessarily aware of it it's a really seductive one and it's a common one and it's actually one a lot of people have learned and so it's again almost fits into the natural response this is where I naturally go and I'm feeling threatened or in danger or upset or hurt or just pissed off there's a flip side though and that's the empowerment dynamic it's an alternative to challenge and create so instead of what we had before we've got a creator a challenger and a coach the victim becomes a creator the persecutor becomes a challenger pushing others to acquire new knowledge and skills and strive to be their best and the rescuer becomes a coach supporting and facilitating from the sidelines rather than getting sucked into the I'm gonna save you which is also not a helpful response and one the community working group needs to be really mindful of that's not our job right how do we do this in a way that isn't suck and our souls dry another one is this I'm okay you're okay people heard of this one yes some to nodding others no so I'm okay you're okay really talks about helps you articulate different power relationships in sort of someone feeling superior and someone feeling inferior I'm okay you're okay we're all okay and we're unlikely to have sort of an issue with each other if I'm not okay and you're okay I'm being subservient to you the flip side is your I'm I'm kind of talking at you like what I'm doing right now no it's a parent voices you should be doing right these kinds of things and then you know the really negative one is when no one's okay you know I'm not okay you're not okay and it's kind of pretty pretty lower not particularly useful but it's a really good one it's been around for a long time and there are some strategies there about shifting from the automatic response there nonviolent communication again is this one that's familiar to some of you hands up yes I've only recently become aware of nonviolent communication it was kind of like you know the lights going on of a really useful way of talking and using language really powerfully you know it NVC is about being very very mindful and clear about observations feelings needs and requests and it was a request part of it that really kind of really worked for me in the sense of describing your own feelings expressing your needs and making a request rather than a demand or the flip side of leaving it totally unexpressed it's like just a request would you be willing you know given you've made the observation you've expressed the feeling and and the need to then make the request of the person to do something differently Matthew that doesn't sound right oh yes thank you NVC thanks typo so the slide is wrong it should be CN VC for nonviolent communication thank you very much Matthew and Barbara Valerie Valerie thank you so I'm expression aid and make a request it's it's really useful and I've got more reading to do on this and I think there are workshops so again in that skill up maybe this is something that happens around the world there are might be workshops and stuff that local meetups could kind of get a speaker from to talk about how do we get more skill up our communication the way we skill up our tech skills right we go learn a new tool well here's some tools another one is powerful non defensive communication this this I think has learned from NVC and taking it in a slightly different direction and this one this one really is for me is very much summed up in that sense of take a deep breath before you enact your natural response your natural response will be to defend yourself in some way or another if you're feeling attacked so instead of just responding from that natural set that natural base pause ask a question make a statement and this is what like NVC does is absorb observations being very precise about what's happening statements and then the final part of me PNDC ask question make statement and predict the consequences so in this case it's like if if you say if you do blah I am going to do blah do you want to do that or if you do if you don't want to do blah I will be fine about that you know to make to create permission to do it so there's this sort of sense of being really checking your response by asking questions check your assumptions be get clarity before responding make statements about what you're hearing and seeing perhaps they're different things perhaps you're getting a response of I'm fine clearly they're not fine so you say I hear you you're saying you're fine but I'm seeing you react and roll your eyes and shake your you know shake your head and which suggests to me you're not fine so it's being really clear about what you're hearing and what you're seeing if you feel there's a disconnect and then there's predicting the consequences thing again I'm only new to it but it's really it's really useful and Valerie talked about surrender well part of the other PNDC literature talks about different kinds of defensive response and surrender surrender betray and surrender attack are different kinds of responses there and surrender surrender just lay down yep and there are I think there's four others and there's a there's a natural attack there are a whole range of defensive responses which are really normal and just coded in language and ways of kind of checking those and responding differently to get a better outcome and this one is um discord def con insults scale for conversations I think this one's going to be particularly useful in our issue queues this came out of a talk by Jenna Lycans from red hat at Apache con just like a few weeks ago her talk was called how to thoroughly insult and defend people in open source and when I saw some tweets about it I thought hey that really I think that dovetails in quite nicely with what I've been trying to do and she has this five scale so the first one is someone basically posts a bug report and says so here here's a problem I found in widget five it's not quite working and his patch that kind of fixes it and so the maintainer of widget five goes huh looks at the patch goes great thanks I'll I'll commit that in next week's release all good that's green that's just gone one just gone to is his patch huh thanks for the patch I see some problems here I don't think was quite works with the way we're doing things so I think this needs to go back to needs work that's true that's blue it's not too bad it's nothing really wrong with that response it's useful there's a bit of there might be a bit more could be a bit more useful with some feedback on how to make it better or what the roadmap is and how it should align but this is all good so far then there's three which is huh his patch huh thanks for the patch I think this coating is kind of stupid I'll take a look at it and consider maybe you know what we could do with it it's like hmm it's not a super useful response but it could be worse and that is hmm thanks to the patch I think you're really stupid to really want to do this or take this approach it's a personal attack there rather than attacking a code it's taking the person but hey we can take it to a whole other level which is disconfive which is gonna fire engine red and that is huh thanks to the patch you stupid idiot for trying to do this and I really rather wish you hadn't you should perhaps go and die in a fire bringing some kind of actually violent you know threat involved in there may not have been a serious threat it may not meant seriously but it's sort of sorry stick your head in a microwave yes is another example another one I heard was um die in a particularly unusual gardening incident so yeah this is what we kind of want to avoid but I wonder if it's useful to kind of have this kind of five point scale handy when we're saying when we're looking through responses and issue cues and wondering why things are escalating to raw so well maybe people are using language which sets people you know up to feel attacked if someone's using that kind of language if someone calls you stupid if someone calls your code stupid if someone then suggests you should stick your head in a microwave dinifier or an awkward gardening accident then you're probably not going to respond with that's so funny some people do and I think that's part of the challenge of our community that there's an assumption that it's a joke for some people it's really confronting and hurtful I've gone off on a tangent but I'm close to the end now and that is ultimately you know we need to work together to avoid stagnation and wasted effort and making people feel bad like it's just not really good use of anyone's time we need to embrace conflict constructively it's fine to disagree but rather than tear me down in that disagreement can we build something together I want us to build a culture of respect where bystanders are empowered to help and Lynette was at the community summit on Monday and you know that was to me like that was the culmination of this talk it's like hey if you're doing more of this stuff where do I find out about it how do I get involved bring it on thank you so much you know their bystanders are empowered to help where it's okay to challenge an idea to help make it better that's what I'd like to see happen that's what I'd invite you all to help us you know that we could build together I really like this quote whenever two good people argue over principles they're both right and this I think happens a lot in our community as we work with our project we bring different ideas to the table there's nothing wrong with those ideas but we need to perhaps compromise to work together to get the best solution going forward and it doesn't necessarily even have to be the best most right solution but it's one we agree on is is is useful then we can move forward Marie-Ebnevon Eschenbach so ultimately we have you know less of this lots of you know holes blown in walls destruction and more you know happy sunflowers and fields of flowers that make us all smile right I just love this because whenever I put up a slide like this everyone goes oh smiles that's what I'd like to see that we can take on board that challenge and conflict is actually a useful thing and and move forward and that my friends is my treatise on constructive conflict resolution and I ask for constructive feedback at the end the you can find it through the session schedule or the shortcut has got a node to 1 9 please if you've taken an hour to be with me now to hear about that then I'd really love your your responses in the feedback some scores are good and comments are great and if you want to continue this conversation with me even better as I said at the front I'm Catacrab and I can't get back to the front really quickly and easily which is actually has that in case it's hard to spell and there we go yes right cool um we're right on six so I'm quite happy to take questions but it's also home time so if you want to if you want to get up and go then please please do but um thank you so much for coming it was just really great and thanks for sharing your thoughts